rise and shine

OFA

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8:40: President Obama tours the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

9:45: PBO delivers remarks (WH Live, the Museum’s website and, maybe, CNN live streaming)

12:30: Jay Carney briefs the press

2:35: PBO presents the Commander-in-Chief Trophy to the Air Force Academy football team

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Washington Post: President Obama will issue an executive order Monday that will allow U.S. officials for the first time to impose sanctions against foreign nationals found to have used new technologies, from cellphone tracking to Internet monitoring, to help carry out grave human rights abuses.

Social media and cellphone technology have been widely credited with helping democracy advocates organize against autocratic governments and better expose rights violations, most notably over the past year and a half in the Middle East and North Africa.

….. Obama’s executive order, which he will announce during a Monday speech at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, is an acknowledgment of those dangers and of the need to adapt American national security policy to a world being remade rapidly by technology….

More here

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NYT: One Saturday last fall, President Obama interrupted a White House strategy meeting to raise an issue not on the agenda. He declared, aides recalled, that the administration needed to more aggressively use executive power to govern in the face of Congressional obstructionism.

“We had been attempting to highlight the inability of Congress to do anything,” recalled William M. Daley, who was the White House chief of staff at the time. “The president expressed frustration, saying we have got to scour everything and push the envelope in finding things we can do on our own.”

For Mr. Obama, that meeting was a turning point …. increasingly in recent months, the administration has been seeking ways to act without Congress ….. the White House has rolled out dozens of new policies — on creating jobs for veterans, preventing drug shortages, raising fuel economy standards, curbing domestic violence and more.

Aides say many more such moves are coming…..

Full article here

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Washington Post: Mitt Romney’s contemptuous attitude toward the importance of public disclosure is increasingly troubling. Whether it involves the details of his personal finances or the identity of his big fundraisers, the presumptive Republican is setting a new, low bar for transparency – one that does not augur well for how the Romney White House would conduct itself if he were elected.

First is the matter of tax returns. Mr. Romney’s campaign, belatedly and under pressure, released a single year’s worth of tax information in January along with a summary for the 2011 return. Now, with a Friday afternoon release conveniently timed for minimum news coverage a week ago, it announced that the candidate had filed for an extension….

…. Then there is the mystery of Mr. Romney’s bundlers… Bundlers play a crucial role for political candidates, collecting donations that can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars to fuel campaigns. The candidates know full well to whom they are indebted. Perhaps Mr. Romney can explain why the public isn’t entitled to the same information.

More here

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Paul Krugman: Just how stupid does Mitt Romney think we are? ….. the question was raised with particular force last week, when Mr. Romney tried to make a closed drywall factory in Ohio a symbol of the Obama administration’s economic failure. It was a symbol, all right – but not in the way he intended.

….Mr. Romney somehow failed to mention: George W. Bush, not Barack Obama, was president when the factory in question was closed. Does the Romney campaign expect Americans to blame President Obama for his predecessor’s policy failure?

Yes, it does. Mr. Romney constantly talks about job losses under Mr. Obama. Yet all of the net job loss took place in the first few months of 2009, that is, before any of the new administration’s policies had time to take effect. So the Ohio speech was a perfect illustration of the way the Romney campaign is banking on amnesia, on the hope that voters don’t remember that Mr. Obama inherited an economy that was already in free fall.

…. Mr. Romney wants you to forget that Mr. Obama has faced scorched-earth political opposition since his first day in office. Basically, the G.O.P. has blocked the administration’s efforts to the maximum extent possible, then turned around and blamed the administration for not doing enough.

Full article here

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Howard Kurtz (Daily Beast): Forget liberal bias. A new study reveals that the press covered Romney twice as favorably as Obama during the primaries – and declared the GOP race over weeks ago.

During the bruising Republican primaries, there was one candidate whose coverage was more relentlessly negative than the rest. In fact, he did not enjoy a single week where positive treatment by the media outweighed the negative.

His name is Barack Obama.

That is among the findings of a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a Washington nonprofit that examined 52 key newspaper, television, radio, and Web outlets.

More here

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Welcome back to shore, Yardarm!

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Morning everyone 😉

good afternoon

Visit thanksobamacare.org

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Original video at Mediaite – thanks Donna Dem

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Even Mr Bigot himself, Pat Robertson, thinks the GOP is too extreme. Seriously:

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I didn’t actually read Halperin’s lead story about Perry, but I think it refers to his IQ.

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I don’t read HuffyPo any more, but I’m guessing it’s looking something like this these days …..

😉

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😳

GOPolitico: The Michele Bachmann of political reporting.

ah, their dishonesty is just breathtaking…..

‘Charles Krauthammer’s Selective Attack on Obama‘

Howard Kurtz (The Daily Beast): After two years of carping about President Obama ramming his ambitious and costly proposals through Congress, some on the right now fume that he is determined to get his way by using — the nerve! — his executive powers.

Charles Krauthammer’s latest column, on this very subject, contains a curious omission, almost a sense of amnesia. The esteemed scribe details how the Obama administration is pushing through three important changes in federal policy, accusing the president of trying “to impose a liberal agenda on a center-right nation” through “regulatory stealth.”

….but here’s the thing: Every president uses the federal bureaucracy to push the country in his preferred ideological direction. That, in fact, is part of what elections are about. Each White House occupant appoints agency chiefs who agree with his philosophy ..… the Krauthammer column implies that Obama practically invented the nefarious practice.

Take, for example, George W. Bush. His EPA moved to loosen clean-air rules near national parks. His Interior Department cleared the way for oil drilling on 130,000 acres of pristine federal land near national parks in Utah (which Obama has since reversed) …. his Minerals Management Service, which referred to oil companies as “clients,” told the firms they did not have to provide detailed response plans for blowouts because such plans were “purely speculative or generic.” This was five years before the BP oil disaster …. his White House Council on Environmental Quality edited an administration report to emphasize scientific uncertainties about global warming …. his Securities & Exchange Commission mounted 87 percent fewer fraud investigations that led to federal prosecutions…..

….Obama may well be engaged in a “leftward lurch” toward stricter federal regulation, as the conservative Krauthammer views it. But when it comes to using the Executive Branch to achieve political goals, he’s had plenty of company.

Full article here